


Bad Wisdom

by PepperCat



Series: Velvet Detonation [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Betrayal, Brief Self-Harm, Crying, Family Drama, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Guns, Hiding, Loyalty, On the Run, Searching, Unreliable Narrator, brief Implied Sexual Content, falling, family devotion, persistance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: Axel's out of Iron Heights, and now he just needs to find his father. Why's that being so hard?(It does not go well. May be worth skipping if you are strongly attached to James being supportive of Axel.)





	Bad Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel to [Fish In the Jailhouse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11171289), which will probably get properly chained together in a series as soon as I come up with a series title.
> 
> (May be lightly edited after the holidays-- it's been a while since I posted, and I don't _think_ I've missed something, but I'm not sure.)

Axel runs.

Leaving the ambulance behind takes him through the kind of neighbourhood that most box stores don't bother to set up in; he bolts through a thrift store, something cheap and small with clothes in the window, snatches a handful of sleeves, yanks several jackets right off the rack and keeps going out the back exit while the clerk is still moving from _what are you_ to _stop_. Alley and dumpster and parking lot and tailor and convenience store and boarded up storefront and one of the jackets is a half-decent fit that at least makes him less noticeable than running around shirtless.

The rain's coming down harder and that's all to the good. There's no-one to speak of in the streets, and sure as hell no-one lounging around watching the world go by; a few people going nowhere fast are sitting in the windows of cheap restaurants but their eyes slide right off him, just another idiot caught out without an umbrella and trying to get whatever errand he's on done fast as possible.

His side is killing him and feels wet (just rain) under the jacket, so he crosses a street and cuts behind a pawn shop and fuck every idiot who was part of putting up a chainlink fence here since the last time he was out but he gets over it and the busses are still running down Tuchton, that hasn't changed.

He doesn't think his performance of _just give me one more second and I'll find my wallet_ is convincing, but the driver's apparently late because he pulls away anyway and Axel gets a lecture and then kicked off at the next stop which is at least past one of the highway exits and he gets off and heads someplace that is going to have people around at this hour and won't require him to buy anything or have security try to move him along because he looks like a scrawny colourblind rat. (The jacket is a fucking godawful thing, maroon suede worn shiny.)

There is no dress code, written or not, in a library.

He bumps into a couple of people as he's going in--one hurrying out and looking anxiously at the sky, one who isn't leaving but sees him coming and holds the inside door open for him--apologizes sincerely, and then heads back out with the last guy's car keys tucked half up his sleeve.

The car gives him breathing room. He unzips the jacket to take a look at whatever the hell the nice lady in the ambulance taped onto him. It's a square maybe twice as big as his palm. The tape at the edges is starting to pull a little loose from him having been out in the rain, and the center of the white padding under the weird plastic-y topcoat is stained with red.

Probably fine. Not like he didn't know he was bleeding, and he's still breathing okay.

There is nothing useful in the car, and he ends up parking it nearly an hour's walk past his destination, outside a pharmacy, wipes it down before he walks away. Maybe it won't get found, maybe it won't get tied to him if it is, but he doesn't want to point anyone looking for him in the right direction.

It's not a great neighbourhood.

The streets and buildings are dark with rain and grime, and the rain spattering him hard from the edges of roofs and fire escapes tastes like rust. He's starting to shiver; the rain eased up for a while but now it's running down the back of his neck and he doesn't have anything on under the jacket. The ambulance was cold but at least it was _dry_.

After (after the before, when it almost worked, when it _was_ working before the fucking Flash showed up) they weren't going to go back to the warehouse. Other people were _meant_ to find that place when they went looking, track down Jesse's hideout and open the door and fill Allen full of knives.

He's pretty sure that they never found the place he and Jesse _were_ going to go. They'd have found his phone if they did, and some of the stuff on it would have come up at trial.

The old Lesko labs were shut down and stripped and then boarded up again years ago, plywood bolted on over everything that used to be glass. The graffiti on the door is scabbed over with rust, and there's trash blown up against the edge of the building, but nothing that looks like anyone's been hanging out around here.

There was a car waiting here for them, once, but it's been gone for seasons.

Axel has a minute where he can't remember the lock's combination and needs to close his eyes and picture that letter again, the creases in the paper and the casual deckled tear along the edge, the smudge of a fingerprint in dull green crayon.

It comes back to him, and he opens the lock and unthreads the chain from the handles and slips inside.

There aren't any lights, and he swallows.

He was kind of hoping his dad would have left something here, trusted him to follow and known he'd have started here, but if that had happened there'd be something when he came in... calliope music, lights, recorded applause. But it's dark and empty and smells like crumbling linoleum and dry rot and rubber dust, and nothing happens when he flicks the switch by the door.

He listens to the dark until he can't take it anymore and then goes forward carefully, one hand on the wall, praying through his teeth that nothing will crawl on him.

He trips going down the stairs to the basement, but it's a short fall. The flashlight isn't where he remembers it being, but when he finds the corner of the table with his hip there's a damp box of matches and a handful of sparklers on it, and he gets some light out of that. Enough to get his bearings, have his memory fall back into place.

The batteries in the flashlight are corroded to shit, but the rubber hoses on the propane tanks are still good; he lights one of the torches and props it up so the flame angles for the ceiling, like an ornate Bunsen burner.

Memories of high school chemistry.

It's not really like candlelight, too hissing and steady, but it's enough to see by. Axel leans back against the wall, scrubbing his hands over his face. No-one'll know to look for him here, except maybe Jesse if Jesse hears he's gotten out, but he's not _wai_ _ting_ on that. Sometimes you get lucky enough to have James Jesse show up in your life, but you don't sit around expecting him to come to you. 

Still, he's got a little breathing room to figure out what exactly to do next. He needs to find his dad, and since Jesse didn't leave word for him that's not going to be an immediate thing. He can stay here for a few days, but he's going to need to be able to actually go out without getting picked up, which means ditching the current soaked ragdoll look.

He'd be shit out of luck right now if he hadn't gotten arrested in a tuxedo.

The basement is cold and sour and a little damp. His clothes, his _real_ clothes, all yellow-blue plaid and careful handpainting, are just cold. He'd stuffed them into the clothing bag the tux came in, figuring it'd be an easy way to grab them and go after if he and Jesse needed to hurry, and they're still waiting there.

He peels out of the lousy jacket and pokes at the bandage on his side, and at least there's not much more red showing up and the edges are still stuck down. He tacks down the one corner that looks like it's coming loosest (go duct tape) and gets dressed properly. The clothes feel a bit loose on him, but Axel tells himself he can fix that later and anyway most of it is probably just being used to prison orange, and having dry clothes and shoes that aren't soaked through helps with the shivering.

He's worrying a little about Jesse not leaving word. Not that anything will have happened to him, but what if he's not _meant_ to go looking for Jesse, if he accidentally screws something up or if the place is being watched and he missed it somehow? If he gets followed and leads someone to Jesse--

No. No no no. If it isn't safe, Jesse will know and won't let Axel find him. So when he finds Jesse, by definition it'll be okay.

(And if it's _not_ safe and Jesse _doesn't_ let Axel find him, then Axel's just going to go _fucking crazy_ and there's no _point_ in planning for something like that. So he's just going to ignore that entire fucking possibility.)

Knowing that makes him feel better.

The gun and the knife are going to be useful. The gun's the one he had at Iron Heights (he shakes his head once, sharply, at memories); the knife is a thing Jesse gave him a line on, lighter than the gun and so sharp. He holds it in the flame for a little just so he can touch its edges and feel it sizzle and crisp delicate lines on his fingertips. They aren't deep enough to hurt.

He goes through his pockets, find nothing particularly useful but crumples everything back in just so they won't be empty. Costumes have empty pockets, and these are his clothes. His phone has been dead for _months_ and he's going to need to get it charged and that's something else he can take care of, along with getting food and maybe figure out something for antibiotics...

He figures he should wait until dark before he goes out again. The propane torch isn't as good as a space heater or anything, but it makes a little difference when he gets close enough. He wraps his coat around himself--it's a bit too fucking distinctive for him to wear outside, but right now it's another way to get warm--and picks up his mask.

"Hey, stranger," he says. The empty eyeholes show the cinderblock walls, glittering faintly with the reflected torchlight. Axel grins. "Come here often? I'd have remembered someone like _you_."

There's no response. Axel tries to imagine where Jesse is now and what he's doing, and it doesn't quite come in to focus. He drops the mask irritably, holds his hands out to the fire.

He's got this. He'll hold himself together and figure out what he needs to get done for his dad.

He's maybe a bit out of practice, but it'll be alright. Just like before.

* * *

Axel...

Axel gets a bit distracted.

The rain has stopped again and he doesn't know how he ever forgot the smell of night air, that weird wild sharpness that makes him grin, and it's past what would be dinner time on the inside and suddenly he's hungry even through the pain in his side. Which means hitting a Big Belly Burger as soon as he gets money and grabbing a triple-patty triple-cheese and then a convenience store and the painkillers aren't working quite fast enough so he stops for a drink which is partly to help them along and partly celebrating being out and partly taking the edge off because he can _tell_ he's feeling a bit giddy and he doesn't want to spin out when he has work to do and--

He gets back to the old lab (because it's a known quantity, because no-one's there, because maybe it just took Jesse a few hours to get around to catching up with him after he heard Axel got out) late enough to almost be early and when he wakes up the next morning, he's still alone and the painkillers have worn _all_ the way off and his head is splitting like rotten fruit and the torch has gone out and he's in knots from sleeping on the cold floor and everything hurts so much when he tries to move that his eyes water and he has trouble even breathing.

It is not his finest hour.

He picks himself up and keeps going.

He keeps trying the places his dad sent him before and there's nothing and he tells himself he can cope with waiting but he can't forget how sometimes he'd wake up and Jesse wouldn't be on his mind at all for a few seconds.

His fingers dig at old cigarette burns, and the thought that's something's broken instead of just faded leaves his mouth dry and--

Axel wakes up every night in an empty room in a dead building after nothing turned up the night before and he keeps needing a little noise to drown out the worry, a little movement just to feel like there's a direction, and even that doesn't really clear his head properly because everything's still so fucking _weird_ that he can't just relax into it.

It's weird to get to _jaywalk_. It's weird to be able to browse in a store, and pick things up and _buy_ them, with money; he walks away without his change a couple of times because he honestly forgets you're supposed to get it. It's weird having real shoes. No new bruises. A hot shower. (Not in the old lab, the copper piping got stripped out years ago, but there's a community centre he gets into although the place is kind of falling to pieces at the edges.) Cheeseburgers. A smartphone (even if it's a couple of years old, and he kind of burns through the first month of pay-as-you-go data in a couple of days).

Speaking of that smartphone: why the fuck isn't there anything about James Jesse? There's shit about the Flash, one site even has a counter up for how long it's been since he last got seen, but it's like Jesse just slipped out of his cell at Iron Heights and then right off the edge of the world and that cannot have happened, a man like James Jesse doesn't just disappear.

He is venting about the edges of that without actually using _names_ , four days in and nothing found when he's trying to clear his head, some mess of words about his dad getting out and not settling back into life on the outside like he's done before and he's talking to someone who's listening as long as he's buying drinks. And he doesn't know if she wants to feel like she's helping or if she's just lonely or what, but it's something to do and it's a change from picking a fight.

(Even _that_ is weird. Not just finding someone who seems to _want_ to be around him for a bit and not the back-and-forth words and not even the mixing smells of dry-ice vodka-cooler sweat lipstick hairspray soap perfume, all so much lighter and cleaner than what he's used to like she's half human and half neon light, but--

(But she keeps touching him. Even after, she's running her fingers over his arm. Like it's nothing to touch people, like it's not a challenge. He wants to slap her away or pull her arm back around him or just warn her to be careful because not everyone's as cool about things as he is and instead he keeps his mouth shut and smiles and gets dressed and goes before he starts shaking or does something equally stupid.)

But he's thinking about it after, about what she said, how if his dad's gotten out before and been okay then he'll be fine again, and he's thinking about everything that James Jesse has done, and it comes to him: this isn't like the time _he_ got his dad out of jail.

This, he suddenly gets, is like before.

He's been looking in the wrong places.

* * *

There's nothing at the Clarx factory. But Axel knows the history of James Jesse better, he's sure, than most people alive, and Clarx is part of the history of him breaking out and before he started his second spree.

The company had a shipping office out in what isn't nice enough to be Northside now, some old brick mess where the bottom floor's a convenience store and the next one up got chopped into apartments and the tottering floors above them are just gathering dust and no-one's been able to rent them out and whoever owns the place can't find anyone worth selling to.

The fire escape is a deathtrap. The inside stairs at least haven't been getting rained on for twenty years.

He goes up slow and careful, putting as much of his weight as he dares on the railing to keep it off the treads. Several of them are rotten and a few are missing and one of them pivots under his foot with the squall of wood pulling loose from old nails and lets him see shadows all the way down to the next flight, but he gets clear before he falls and keeps going up.

He's a flight down from the top when he hears his dad.

He can't hear the words, but he hears Jesse's voice, that smooth cadence over the laugh that's just waiting to burst out, and his heart kicks over hard and goes into overdrive. He hears someone else, too, slow and arch, makes him think of the warden at Iron Heights. He can feel the jealousy spiking hard in his stomach like he's swallowed nails, and he touches his fingers to his mask, feels it slick and heavy on his face and grins.

Don't embarrass him, don't upset him. Jesse wouldn't work on a _real_ plan without him, Axel's sure, but he needs to make sure whoever he's talking to hasn't gotten the wrong idea, or if he _has_ gotten the wrong idea it's because Jesse _wanted_ him to for some reason and Axel can't contradict that.

He gets up to the landing and now he can actually make out the words of the other voice. It's saying something about having company, and it sounds so calm and collected about it all Axel doesn't realize it's talking about him until there's a pause and it adds "Would you like to come out now?"

Well, fuck, you can't always pick your entrance lines. Axel hikes the grin onto his face and steps out. "Didja miss me?"

"Axel, my boy!" and Jesse's grinning, his hair up and ruffled and his teeth showing as he spreads his arms and Axel does not run to him, he is not a little fucking kid, but he's hurrying and leaning close and when Jesse reaches out and puts both hands casually on his shoulders Axel forgets that he ever felt cold. He straightens into the grip and grins as Jesse continues. "You're here, you're here, so good to have you on board."

"Are we sure he's on board?" and Axel's head snaps around to glare at the mellow voice, some _very_ -bleached-blond jackass in a dark suit--an actual _suit_ , never mind that he's standing around the broken-windowed candle-lit top floor of what's basically a tenement building. Axel finds his fingers itching for the chance to take him down a peg, like they would for any asshole who puts himself in the same _we_ as James Jesse.

"My boy's reliable," Jesse says, letting go of one of Axel's shoulders and turning towards the man. "Axel, say hello to Mr Dark."

"Hello, Dark." Axel's teeth are all showing, and his hands are at his side and behind his back, crawling for the grip of his gun and the hilt of his knife. He doesn't like how the man's smiling, it's got no heart to it.

"The dark man here," Jesse adds, "is going to be working with us on a wonderful plan." Axel obediently stops reaching for his weapons, looks away from the other man and back to Jesse. His heart skips a little when Jesse doesn't seem to notice. "Seems Starling was a little to hot for him to handle, but Central's a good place for him to stop by-- especially since that scarlet streak's not around." His hand slides over Axel's shoulders, and Axel leans towards him, grinning. "How d'you feel about expanding our skillset, boy?"

"What else could you possibly want to do?" It's a serious question, for all the sneer Axel's putting Dark's way. Jesse's perfect.

"Allow me to demonstrate." Dark's looking at Jesse, eyebrows lightly raised (Axel thinks; the guy's hair is so pale and the lighting's bad enough it's hard to tell), and Jesse snickers and nods. Dark lifts one hand, spreads thumb and first two fingers idly in the air.

\--Axel can't breathe.

He _literally_ can't breathe.

He's trying; there's no air getting in, no matter how he tries to pull for it. It's like there's a pillow over his mouth and nose, something soft and invisible blocking all the breathing.

He grabs for his own face and throat, but there's nothing there. Everything feels soft and swollen, plugged and thick. He can't even gasp like he could if someone was holding his head underwater, nothing's coming _in_ , and his chest is hitching and Dark's grinning.

Axel bares his teeth and grabs for his gun, fingerslip and miss but he keeps trying. His vision's getting dim but if the guy _is_ doing this, if he's some fucking freak, Axel is going to find out if putting a hurt on him will stop it--

"Perhaps we need some _reinforcement_ ," Dark says, and flicks at something with his other hand, like he's turning a page in midair. Axel's knees hit the floor and he has to catch himself to keep from falling over. Dark chuckles. "Oh, he's a fighter."

Jesse's laughing, and Axel's furious. He shoves himself back onto his heels so he can get a hand free, trying again--

"That's enough, that's enough," Jesse says, coming up behind him and putting his hands on Axel's shoulders. Dark puts his hands down, and Axel can breathe again, raw sandpaper gasps.

"You see, my boy?" Jesse's saying, and Axel nods. He's going to get up, but he needs a minute. Fucking freak or something, half-assed bag of parlour tricks and head-games, let Jesse say the word and he'll find a way to split Dark open. He will, somehow.

But when he gets up, his knees feeling like water and his head spinning, Jesse isn't even looking at him. Looking at Dark, looking _fascinated_ , and Axel's chest is hurting worse than it did even in the ambulance.

"You trust this bozo?" he says. His voice doesn't sound rough at all, and that surprises him. It feels like he should sound like he was nearly strangled; it feels like he should sound like something's stuck in his throat, with the way Jesse isn't even really looking at him. Axel glances at Dark and has to look away before he does something that'd make Jesse mad.

"Axel, Axel," that raw rough voice rolling out, and Jesse's saying his name, and Axel feels a little better. "I know he looks like a bit of a square, but he's got _ideas_. We can listen."

"If you say so." And he's hoping for an _I do_ , maybe even a nod, but Jesse's looking at Dark. Axel thought he was going to die, and that would be okay if it had been funny, if it was something Jesse was laughing over right now, but his dad doesn't even seem to _notice_.

Axel swallows and straightens up.

"Catch him up to speed, would you?" Jesse says. His eyes are glittering in the candlelight, and Axel's starting to hate Dark nearly as much as Mardon. It's a slower build, and he can feel it knotting up his stomach, but it's there.

And Dark explains that there's a few things he wants from Central, but being as how he's never really _been_ here and doesn't want to attract attention, he thought he'd find a remarkable man to help him collect said few things. And of course such a remarkable man would personally benefit from it when Dark finished his work, not to mention being preserved.

"Preserved from what?"

"My work will take a lot of energy," Dark says, smiling. "The Gem Cities should provide just enough."

Axel looks at his dad again, confused. Jesse's grinning. If Jesse looked like he'd be _talking_ , Axel would just wait, but instead he says "Tell me your big idea isn't to knock over a _p_ _o_ _wer plant_." Or fuck with STAR Labs. Last time someone fucked with the Labs there was the whole mouth-of-sucking-doom in the sky and the Flash and some guy on _fire_ and all it came to, Axel heard, was months of construction that had a bunch of the older guys in the Heights looking fat-cat smug about something to do with unions.

"A blackout? Oh, no, no. I was discussing a more _personal_ kind of energy."

Axel glares at him for a second and decides to go back to basics.

"You _are_ going to kill people, right?"

Dark nods. "People contain a surprising amount of potential," he says, strolling across the room. He looks weirdly precise, moving elegant and neat across the fat grit of the floor; it doesn't even squeak under his shoes. Jesse's eyes track him and Axel's pretty sure he hasn't hated anyone as much as Dark before, not Mardon, not even the Flash after Jesse had told him that that scarlet freak had cheated and it was okay to think it was his fault and not Axel's. "One or two I can make a little use of, but for what I'm actually trying to accomplish, I'll need... more. The local population should do it."

Axel looks to Jesse, who's looking gleefully pleased. Okay. He hooks one hand over his other wrist and thinks. He doesn't exactly have anyone he cares about in Central who isn't standing in this room, but...

"How'll you do it?" he says to Dark.

"Are you doubting my capabilities? I can provide another demonstration."

Axel's heart jumps but he covers the flinch by rolling his eyes.

"No, _how_. You blowing them up or what?"

"Ah. A small-picture kind of guy. How refreshing." Dark smiles, a shit-eating politician's grin, and Axel takes a minute to imagine sinking his thumbs into the man's throat and choking him until the whites of his eyes go red. "Quickly, subtly, probably painlessly. Likely in their sleep, although there are always a few night owls."

Axel blinks. Takes it in. 

Turns his head as if Dark doesn't exist anymore and puts all his focus on Jesse; the man who made a carnival out of murder, who made calliopes and recorded laughter the stuff of nightmares, the showman so great that after a _generation_ passed his name was enough to make an entire city believe that it was going to be blown into smithereens and bloody rags, and speaks to him as he's never spoken to him before.

"And you're _okay_ with this?"

Jesse waves a hand dismissively. "We'll move on. Find greener pastures." His grin widens. "Maybe take a look at Starling before Dark here heads back and wipes the place out. I hear they're doing interesting things with arrows down there these days."

"But--" Axel runs his hands through his hair, scrubs at it and tries to make it make sense. Remembers what'd happen when Beukes died in his sleep on the block, drank himself sick on pruno and threw up in his sleep and choked on it. His cellmate had poked him and the body had rolled over and Axel had heard him call out _awh fuck_ , but it had just been a disgusted noise, flat and exasperated, like a man who'd stepped in shit from an overflowing toilet. No horror, no shock. The scope of it, there's something to that, a kind of Jonestown glory, but-- Nothing leading up to it, no set-up, no tease, no _game_ , no...

"Just... you want us to keep our heads down?" he says to Jesse. "Not... not do anything anyone sees, and then everybody wakes up dead?"

"By George, I think he's got it," the white man says, and Axel smiles and doesn't look at him because that's a better option than trying to rip Dark's throat open with his bare hands, at least right now. No-one else gets to speak for James Jesse, that's not how it _works_.

But Jesse agrees. "Come along, my boy," he says genially, and Axel leans towards him, but Jesse isn't paying attention, doesn't reach out to put a hand on his neck or shoulder again. "You've held up under worse conditions, I'm sure you can stay quiet. It'll only be a few months."

Like someone 'accidentally' bumping into him from behind when he's going down the stairs, the sudden lift and space underneath him and nothing holding him up until he crashes into what's all hard edges and blood.

"...months?"

"June, July..." Jesse gives him a sly grin. "October..."

Axel is sure he's not going to faint, but he can't remember how to talk.

"Ah," Dark says glibly, "perhaps your assistant _can_ comport himself in a--"

"You're _out_ and you're gonna be quiet for _month_ _s_?"

("Oh well probably not, then.")

Jesse looks at Axel and isn't smiling.

"Dark," he says, with all his teeth showing, "I think we need a bit of father-son time. Pop off, would you?" and then Dark's just gone, clean fucking gone, and any other time Axel would care but that's really not his focus right now, it's all on _what's wrong_.

There's a moment of silence. Everything looks very bright and Axel can't actually feel his feet, wants to reach out and hold onto his dad for something stable and can't do it because Jesse's getting mad, he can _tell_ Jesse is getting mad, but it's his dad and something isn't right so he can't let it go, not any more than he could let it go by without seeing Jesse when he was sure Jesse was mad at him over the wristbomb, not anymore than he could keep from asking Jesse if anyone had hurt him, had _dared_. Something isn't right and he can't let that go.

"Are you questioning me, Axel?"

"No, but--" Yes. Yes yes yes. What he wants to say is _what's wrong with you_ and he cannot do that.

"Are you going to help me?"

"Always." That comes out fast and sure enough that Axel feels something like the floor under his feet again; there's no question of that, there has _never_ been a question of that. "Dad, it's-- doesn't he know who he's _dealing_ with? He wants _you_ , but not the spectacle?" Jesse's face softens a very tiny fraction at the praise. "It's a trick, isn't it?" 

He's not stupid. He's not expecting confirmation. He's _expecting_ an _of course not_ , but with a laugh or a wink or a widening grin, something he can pick up on so he can tell the inside joke is there, that it's him and his dad and he doesn't need to know _how_ to be sure that the plan is to yank the rug out from under that pallid freak.

Instead Jesse waves a hand dismissively and looks around. "Dark?" he calls. "We're getting back to planning things, now."

Dark sleeves back into the room out of thin air, fingers laced casually together in front of him. Axel's still too stunned to even jump. He takes a step back, another, mouth curling as he shows his own teeth and he feels like he couldn't laugh again, no matter what, not at all. Jesse's gone wrong and quiet and still, and there's a man in the room that appears and disappears out of thin air and chokes people with his mind, and Axel is bone-sure nothing less than some new freaky fuckery on the part of this bleached-white besuited asshole stand-in could have changed his dad so much.

_Are you going to help me?_

_Always._

His dad will be mad; his dad will be _so mad_ , and Axel doesn't think about that because if he does he might stop, and no-one else takes care of James Jesse, they never have.

Axel takes another step back, hands folded behind his back, glowering like a sulky jealous kid, and as soon as Dark looks away he pulls out his gun and fires. Let's see the fucker stop a bullet.

Which he does.

Dark snaps around faster than he can quite see--like a jump cut from smiling amicably at Jesse to glaring at him, holding up a hand. The bullets freeze in mid-air like fat flies stuck on a glue strip.

Jesse looks _furious_.

Axel feels a wave of something coming towards him, like wind or snow, and jumps back. One of his shoulders hits the empty teeth of glass in the windowframe of the wall, the other pushes out past pure air, and he can't tell if he can breathe or not but Jesse's coming right at him and the look on his father's face--

Axel gets his foot up on the sill and shoves himself back out the window hard as he can.

His coat pulls the last of the glass out as he lands across the fire escape railing, does a giddy flip-and-roll amid a shower of rust as it gives way underneath him. One of his belts snags on the jagged metal edge, tumbling him back towards the fire escape.

He grabs another landing as it goes by. The rust on the metal crumbles under his fingers, but there's still a little steel under there, brittle and jagged. It splits his gloves and cuts into his hands and he lets go, but he's slowed his fall and catches the last landing before the ground and that one holds his weight long enough that he can catch his breath and let himself fall the final storey's height.

He lands and goes sprawling, is pretty sure he hasn't broken anything when he gets back to his feet and runs.

* * *

Jesse shouldn't be like that. Jesse shouldn't be like that. Axel's sure of it. He thinks he understands now how Jesse vanished the way he did--Dark did that vanishing thing, must have snatched Jesse right out of his cell--but there's _no fucking way_ that _James Jesse_ has been loose in Central for _weeks_ and no-one's even gotten flashpowder burns over it.

Dark did something to him and Axel doesn't know how to fix it.

He doesn't go back to the old lab. Jesse still _knows_ things, Jesse remembered him, he's just _acting_ wrong, and that means he'd know the places Axel might go. Even if he didn't care enough to look there before he might now. Now that he's angry.

So Axel's just, you know, out in the crumbling parts of Keystone, doesn't have anywhere safe to be, and needs to figure out how to stop some, some fucking Agent-Smith-style _Matrix_ escapee from messing with his dad.

He stops when he doesn't know where he is anymore, figures that if he doesn't recognize anything Jesse won't know to come looking for him here. Picks an alley away from the streetlights and sits down so he won't get noticed not because he's shaking and scrubs his hands through his hair, trying to figure out what the fuck to _do_.

Dark's a freak. It's not like that means he can't die, but Axel can't figure out how to do that on his own, sure as fuck isn't trying a bomb while Jesse's around him, and the guy who takes care of freaks in Central is the fucking Flash and the fucking Flash isn't fucking _around_.

Not that he could go to the Flash, anyway. Jesse hates that guy.

Fuck.

It's not like there are people who'd do anything to help Jesse, anyway. Axel's, like, the only one he knows you could rely on for that. Jesse's got _fans_ , sure, but they've got no conviction, the kind of guys who'd swap references and theories online but got pretty uptight about talking to Axel when he wasn't interested in talking about anything else.

Genius, Axel notes, is rarely appreciated in its time. The thought is enough to make him hiccup out a little giggle, and that helps.

Okay. Okay.

How to get rid of a freak.

The Flash isn't around, fine. Fuck the Flash anyway, he's not all that. But there's one guy who's picked a fight with the scarlet fucker a handful of times, and maybe he's only about fifty-fifty when it comes to _winning_ but he keeps coming back for another round. If you needed to take someone down you could do worse than start with his help.

Axel just needs to figure out how to pitch it.

**Author's Note:**

> The Lesko labs don't exist as far as I know, but they're a shout-out to the drug designer in the 1990 episode "Child's Play", which features a kid who is [Definitely Not Axel](https://peppersandcats.tumblr.com/post/168756292658/flash-1990-really-not-axel-edition).
> 
> One of the things that I'm constantly fascinated by (and did not really get much of a chance to explore here, since it's not Axel's focus, although his back-and-forth between blowing off steam in a relatively frivolous way and looking for James Jesse does reflect it) is the pacing and transience of how his relationship with Jesse was built. Not that the relationship itself is transient (I honestly think Axel's gotten more able to cope with Jesse's relative absence after Iron Heights, whether you spin that as absence making the heart grow fonder or de Becker's observation that if someone is obsessed with you and you don't interact with them until they've called you forty times, they have learned that forty times is the new minimum after which they might get a response and will carry on from there); it's clearly still very important to Axel.
> 
> But it was based on letters. I think I've already rambled about how slowly a relationship built on letters might progress, just because of how relatively slow the postal service is compared to email. But it also matters that they were _letters_ ; people generally keep copies of letters that were sent _to_ them, not ones that they've sent, and unlike email the previous text isn't automatically included in the reply. It's a relationship entirely built on what is said, but the only record available is the record of the other person's words, not of what you yourself may have sent them. I write letters on occasion, and they feel a little odd because of that even when I have electronic communication as a backup.
> 
> ((As to the relationship not fading because of distance: I know I've written Axel as having moments of forgetting about Jesse. Those moments came after his contact with James Jesse was curtailed; they also came after he started burning himself for being glad that Jesse was nearby.))


End file.
